The Cuckoo's Child (23 page)

There was also a cuckoo letter, claiming to have heard the first call of the year, so triumphant and excitable I thought it had to be an endangered creature and resolved to find out more about it. Perhaps, I thought idly, there was a Cuckoo Trust, dedicated to preserving its habitat, along the lines of the group that struggled on behalf of hedgehogs and persuaded local authorities to build escape ramps for them underneath cattle grids, or the snake and toad supporters who agitated for tunnels under major roads to save the migrating reptiles and amphibians from being squashed flat in their headlong dash to reproduction. First, though, I had to tackle Hescot Park and the Holy Terror.

That night, I slipped away in the stillness of my round room as the darker bulk of the beech tree nodded outside, tapping a message in code on the windowpane, and floated again, for the first time in ages, to the white house without walls. There I waited while cloud shadows raced across the surface of the lake at time lapse speed, scanning the water for a sign, any sign, eyes wide and unblinking, muscles clenched with the intensity of my yearning. When I woke, I was exhausted, and tears were crawling down my face.

My landladies got me to Berkshire in the end. Inquiries into train and bus services convinced me that any approach to Sharrington by public transport would be complicated and tedious.

“Never been the same since Beeching closed down all the branch lines,” said Miss Hoar when I lamented the difficulties of dovetailing timetables. “Used to be able to get anywhere by train. Idiots said it wasn't profitable.”

Miss Plover recognized a hobbyhorse and came to my rescue.

“We were wondering,” she began delicately, “if we could drive you there? It really isn't far away. It would make a nice trip, and the country's lovely.”

It was the solution, but I didn't want them to be left hanging about, waiting for me.

“I don't know what kind of reception I'm going to get,” I replied. “I wouldn't want you to be inconvenienced.”

“Oh nonsense,” said Isobel. “There's a fourteenth-century church in the village with a spectacular rood screen and some wonderful brasses. We'll have lots to do—you'll probably end up waiting for us while we poke about. We're terrible when we get our teeth into a bit of history!”

I could believe it when I saw the rolls of paper, the bag full of soft brushes and balls of what looked like black wax for the brass rubbing, and the cameras and lenses and rolls of film that went into the trunk with the sandwiches and thermoses, apples, oranges, Penguin biscuits, and the inevitable sherbert lemons.

Miss Plover drove a venerable Rover with characteristic dignity. She sat bolt upright, her large hands clutching the wheel in the approved position, and cautiously steered the car out of the driveway. The Rover was old, but its motor whispered along, and the interior was luxurious in a way none of the cars I've ever driven could boast. The seats were dark brown leather, and the dashboard was a polished wood, walnut, at a guess. There was plenty of leg room in the back and convenient pockets for maps and guidebooks and sherbert lemons in the doors. This solid comfort was all of a piece with our majestic progress through the suburbs, through the Green Belt, and into countryside I thought existed only on calendars: rolling fields bounded by thick hedges, windswept downland with huddles of sheep in the dips and hollows, and stone cottages in villages where the church tower or steeple poked out of a tangle of branches and rooks and yew trees stood among the graves.

Sharrington was just such a place. Isobel squealed in approval as she caught sight of the lych gate and the churchyard, crowded with weathered headstones, and Miss Hoar craned her neck to see the top of the cross erected in the middle of what looked like a market square, colonnaded and cobbled. Houses and shops huddled round this central point but soon petered out as we followed the main road through the village to be replaced by a long wall that parallelled the highway for what seemed like miles.

The stones of the wall were golden with lichen and looked as if they would be warm to the touch, but they were an efficient barrier. Inside the girdle of stone, ancient trees stood in pools of shadow, and there were tantalizing glimpses of rooftops and driveways, grazing animals and open fields through the wrought iron gates that punctured the wall at intervals. One set of gates was particularly ornate and had twin cottages attached on either side. This, I presumed, was the main gate of the estate, and the lodgekeeper used to live there, handy for his task of opening the gates for carriages. Perhaps he still did, for cars, but the cottages had a still, sad air of disuse. As we passed, I just caught a glimpse of the signboard outside the gate:
HESCOT PARK
, it read.
NATIONAL TRUST
.

Following the wall even farther brought us to another gate, of the five-barred farm variety this time. A driveway curved out of sight between two fields. A large herd of Friesians grazed in one, and the other lay fallow, the heavy clods of earth hardened just as the plow had turned them in the fall. Another sign announced
PUBLIC PARKING, JUNE 1–30
, and an arrow pointed mutely to the drive.

“This is probably the way in,” said Miss Plover, parking neatly on the grass verge. “Shall we try?”

Suddenly I wanted them gone. I had become very fond of them, and I was grateful, but this was something I had to tackle on my own, not accompanied by a gaggle of elderly ladies as if I needed support but had few resources to choose from. I urged them to go and visit the church since the park obviously opened to visitors only one month in the year, so they wouldn't be able to wander around while they waited for me.

“Didn't you plan to do brass rubbings?” I asked. “You'd better get started; don't they take a long time?”

“Are you quite sure you'll be all right?” Miss Plover looked anxious.

“Stop twittering, Mildred, she's perfectly capable of looking after herself. Got a brain and a tongue in her head, hasn't she? Leave her to get on with it; she doesn't want us around for this. It's private. Besides, she'll tell us all about it later.”

I could have hugged Miss Hoar for her bluntness and acuity. Miss Plover subsided, and we made arrangements for them to pick me up at the gate later in the afternoon. I watched them pack themselves into the car and smiled at the three faces turned my way.

“Good luck!” Isobel mouthed as the car bumped slowly off the grass and three hands waved simultaneously as if conferring a blessing. I turned quickly without giving myself time to reconsider, climbed the gate, and set off up the driveway.

Canada is a land that puts its inhabitants in their place where scale is concerned. I'm used to insignificance against vast skies and forests and seas that might cover the face of the earth for all you can see an end to them. Yet I've never felt so vulnerable as I did toiling along that narrow road in the midst of a pretty, domesticated landscape straight out of one of the Gainsboroughs I'd seen in the National Gallery. I half expected to find a complacent young gentleman, dressed in silks and lace, his dogs at his side, leaning nonchalantly against a noble oak, his outstretched hand directing my eyes to the expansive woods and fields picked out in loving detail behind him, his knowing smile saying, “Mine, all mine. See how important, how successful I am?”

I was quite alone, in fact. The cows near the fence watched me pass with the heavy attention of their kind that makes you think their blood must be like molasses, sliding slowly through their veins. I could hear their breathing and soft snorts as their wet rubber noses tilted and dilated at me, and one or two, bolder than the rest, took ponderous steps closer to the wire to inspect the alien.

The road wound around a stand of trees, rising gently. Open fields lay to my right as far as I could see. In the distance, a tractor no bigger than a toy crept along a track, but I saw no other evidence of people. The road I was on plunged into a wood, full of new leaf, and my footfalls were deadened by the mast lying on the ground. There were tracks through the trees, too narrow to have been made by men, and where one of these opened into a shallow ditch I met a hare. We both stopped dead, he rigidly upright, trembling with tension, one black eye watching intently as he held his Roman nose in profile. Then he was gone, back the way he had come, and in the still moment before I started walking again, I heard a sound.

It was a bird, but not one I had ever heard before. The two-note call came again, distant but quite distinct, ahead of me. I knew what it was because it told me. “Cuckoo,” it said, “cuckoo,” the second note a third lower than the first, exactly like someone calling, “Cooee!” but the tone full and liquid, not shrill and high. I stood listening, looking about, hoping for a movement or the flash of a wing, but there was no sign of the bird, and when it called again, it had moved farther off. I felt absurdly pleased to have heard it and went on, smiling.

Soon I came upon signs of occupation, if not life. The road emerged from the trees, and I found myself walking beside a grassy expanse bordering an artificial waterway. The grass had been tended, but the low stone walls and steps that guided the water down the slope were covered in moss and there were long curtains of algae in the pools. I followed the watercourse, thinking that the house must be somewhere close by, but all I found was an old tennis court by the stream, cracked wooden posts at each side with the remains of a net trailing from them.

A man was bending over one of the posts. He straightened up as I approached and looked at me expectantly.

“You haven't come about the tiles, have you?” he asked obscurely.

“I'm afraid not.”

“Pity,” said the man, then added hastily, “not that it isn't a pleasure to see a lady, of course.”

“Of course. But tiles are uppermost in your mind today.”

“Well, yes, though I'm trying to make up my mind about this too. Should I turn it into a swimming pool, d'you think?”

I thought of the algae and wondered who would look after a swimming pool.

“Awful lot of upkeep,” I said, “chlorination and such.”

“Yes,” he said doubtfully, “there is that. Weather's usually bloody awful too. Have to think about it.”

He was about my age, with a thin brown face and hazel eyes with remarkable eyelashes. He was very tall, attenuated as a Masai, and dressed in filthy jeans, mudspattered Wellington boots, and an ancient sweater with a large hole at the right elbow and fraying cuffs.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked. “We're not actually open to the public this time of year, I'm afraid.”

“I'm hoping to see Mr. Goodman, Magnus Goodman. If you could tell me where I'd find him.”

“Oh,” said the man, “come to see the boss, have you? Just follow the road around. You'll come to the stables, well, they used to be stables, more storage for equipment now. You'll probably find him around there.”

He was pointing the way with his left hand. I couldn't help noticing that his watch was a Rolex.

I left him tugging at the frayed rope on the post and returned to the road. As he had promised, it soon brought me to a sprawl of buildings, dark inside, still smelling faintly of horse but inhabited mostly by sacks and boxes and farm machinery. I wandered through a gateway in a high wall of rosy brick and found a row of greenhouses surrounded by bins of soil, stacks of seedling trays and punnets, barrels and pots, wheelbarrows and carts. A man emerged from a shed carrying a garden fork. He looked much too young to be Magnus Goodman. He stared at me curiously but would have passed with a mumbled greeting if I hadn't asked him where I could find the head gardener.

“He'll be in his office, I reckon,” he said, “down the end there, last one.”

Office
was an overstatement unless you understand it simply as a place of work. The greenhouse was the way they used to be: brick base, wooden frame, and real glass. Some of the glass had been whitewashed to cut down on the glare, and the greenhouse had an enclosed, separate feel to it like a cave. The benches on each side were covered with trays, many sprouting seedlings, and underneath huddled tanks of water and longnecked watering cans.

There was a space at the far end of the greenhouse. An old wooden table had been shoved into a corner and was littered with papers, many smeared with earth, and skewered on spikes, balls of twine, plant labels, and small tools like secateurs and knives. A large cabinet of tiny drawers with brass handles and nameplates stood in the other corner, and in between was a bench with a number of sticks lying on it, arranged in a neat row. Sitting in a sagging chair with his back to me was a large man.

“Mr. Goodman?” I ventured.

The massive shoulders twisted and his face peered round.

“Yes?”

Now that I had come to the moment I'd been anticipating for weeks, I was mute. How was I going to introduce this topic? “I have reason to believe” sounded far too much like the police to make a good impression. “You are my uncle,” too challenging by far. Launching myself at him with glad cries of “I'm your long-lost niece!” just asking for rejection. In the end, I made use of Deirdre again.

“I think Deirdre has already mentioned me to you.”

“Is that so?”

“Yes, I'm the one who thinks . . . no, that is, I'm pretty sure I'm related to her. I know it sounds impossible, but I think I'm your niece. You did once have two, didn't you?”

He swivelled the chair around so he could see me better. His bulk filled the chair, and he looked immovable as he sat with his feet in their heavy boots planted firmly wide apart and thrust his large head at me, bracing the weight of his upper body with his hands on his knees.

“Not only sounds impossible but
is
,” he said, “and I'll tell you for why so's we don't get ourselves in a bother for nothing.”